Mohamed,
Static Multicast/Broadcast MAC addresses are not supported on the Nexus 3000 series; this is why you are receiving the error.
Additionally, regarding your second post, a Multicast MAC address is more than just any MAC that begins with (01-00-5E...) - All the MAC addresses you tried, 03-00-00-00-10-20, 01-00-00-00-12-34 and 01-ff-aa-bb-cc-dd are considered Multicast MAC addresses because the last bit of the first Octect is set to 1 if you were to convert them in binary - In other words, In the first octet, bit 0 has been reserved for broadcast or multicast traffic. When we have unicast traffic this bit will be set to 0. For broadcast or multicast traffic this bit will be set to 1.
I'll explain here with two examples:
01-00-5e-40-50-60 in binary would begin as follows:
0000 0001 - 0000 0000 - 0101 1110 ...
As mentioned, a Multicast MAC address is technically any MAC address where the last bit of the first Octect is set to 1, this is what I've highlighted in red above.
Using your second example of 03-00-00-00-10-20 and converting it to binary would be as follows:
0000 0011 - 0000 0000 - 0000 0000....
Again, the last bit of the first Octect is set to 1 so this is in fact also a Multicast MAC address (which is why the switch will not accept it).
If by chance you were attempting this for Microsoft NLB in Multicast mode, please note that this is also not supported for the Nexus 3000 platform and has been documented here
Hope this helps!
- Andrea
- Andrea, CCIE #56739 R&S
